Monday, February 27, 2012

Zva Creative and our talented Design Team welcome you to join us for our February Blog Hop! We are happy to have you join us today today!

The Blog Hop begins at Zva Creative's NEW blog! Be sure head on over if you'd like to start from the top of the hop. You will also find a complete list of all the participating blogs there (in case there is a glitch along the way).

As you know, Zva offers many beautiful color groupings for pearls, flowers and crystals. We want to make sure that they shine bright for you, so each designer was asked to share a creation using a specific color or color combination on their blog hop project. If you like what you see you can find a list of stores and online retailers that sell Zva HERE.

I used Graphic 45's Once Upon A Springtime papers and did lots of detailed cutting and layering.

A shot of the Zva flower and crystal. I love how the colours go so well with the patterned papers. And did you notice the little fairy that's gently blowing the crystal flourish? Talking about fairies, guess how many little fairies there are on the layout?

If you would like to play along with our design team, just follow along the blog path. I am linking to one of the Zva designers and that designer is linking to the next and so on. Be prepared to be inspired along the way!

Hidden on FIVE of the designer's blogs is a Zva Creative prize package! Winners will be randomly chosen after the hop is over, so it's important to leave a comment on as many blogs as you can along the way.

The Blog Hop starts today, February 27th and runs through 11:59pm US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, February 28th.

The 5 winners will be announced on Wednesday, February 1st on each of the five winning blogs. The full list of where our winners will be posted will be found on Zva's blog as well. We will do our best to notify each winner, but it's best if you can pop in to all of the blogs once again on Wednesday... plus, you never know what kind of inspirational creation that you may find there.

All you need to do is leave a comment on this Blog Hop post... you do not need to leave a comment on each and every designer's blog post to qualify. However, the more times you comment along the blog hop path, the more chances you will have to win.

We also thought it would be more fun to add even more chances to win our blog hop prize! To increase your chances of winning:

* Comment to let us know that you posted on Facebook or "tweeted" about our hop (link to any of the blog hop posts)

* Comment to let us know that you asked your local store to carry Zva creative products. If they already do, that's fantastic, maybe you can suggest other products that they don't carry.

Graphic 45's having a design team call and as you know I love all things Graphic 45. I was on the Graphic 45 DT in 2009 and have really fond memories of it. I didn't try out last year but continued to create with their gorgeous papers and products so I've decided to give it a go this year.

I made a little brass cameo from the yellow butterfly in the patterned paper.

This next cover opens up to reveal the music box:

I kept this compartment relatively unadorned so it can be used to keep bits of jewellery or keepsakes. And yes, that is a real music box.

On the right of the music box is this shabby-chic page, adorned with butterflies.

The butterflies hold the key to a surprise to this project. It is the Olde Curiosity Shoppe collection after all, and we have to pique curiosity. Open up this page and ta-daaahh!

The Olde Curiosity Shoppe in 3D, along with a flying pig. :)

Project 2: Old Fashioned Camera

I made this next project on a whim yesterday after looking at the Curtain Call collection and my old stash of Communique papers. I thought it would be fun to create my own old fashioned camera. It still needs work and I'll probably make a new and improved model later. But for now, here's my version of a vintage camera.

The camera is made from recycled products like a biscuit box, toilet roll and bottle covers.

The back of the camera:

Which opens up to a glamorous 3D scene from the Red Carpet:

Project 3: Romantique Altered Film Canister and Mini Album

I altered Graphic 45's Metal Film Canister using the lovely Romantique papers. I went for a floral topper complemented by some flowers, butterflies, lace trims and doilies.

The mini album:

The inside pages of the mini, featuring a peekaboo window to the page behind:

Project 4: Layout - Wicked

We had just gone to catch Wicked the Musical in London and of course I had to scrap it using Graphic 45's The Magic of Oz papers.

The layout is created in a shadowbox-style, made from the Magic of Oz papers. The base of the layout is hemp, which reminded me of Scarecrow. The layout is built up in 3D layers, going about 4 layers deep.

Project 5: Layout - A Perfect Day

Another layout in a shadowbox style, this time using the very pretty Once Upon A Springtime papers.

Some close-ups:

A little fairy sprinkling fairy dust on a rose.

Project 6: Layout - Notre Dame

A layout using le' Romantique papers in a cleaner romantic style with splashes of mist.

Project 7: Layout - Little Italy

I love the colours on this layout so decided to show it off as well. It's a layout from one of the earlier collections, On The Boardwalk.

Project 8: Layout - Hugs, Love, Kisses

Another layout using the ever-so-pretty Once Upon a Springtime collection. These papers are so easy to use they practically scrap themselves. Lots of fussy cutting here, layered with concentric circles of doilies and punched borders, with the foam dot layers going 4 levels high.

So there you have it, some of my most recent Graphic 45 projects as well as a couple of older ones. All the best to everyone trying out for the DT!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Hello! It's February and maybe because Valentine's Day is just around the corner and there's pink paper collections all around, but whatever the reason, my scrapping colour du jour is pink and brown. Make that du mois. :)

Here's a layout I created using Basic Grey's new Kissing Booth collection.

I'm not a pink layout person, but the mix of browns and not overly lovey-dovey prints in the BG papers made it ideal for making a grungy-if-somewhat-sweet layout of my puppy. I went to town with my distressing tool, distress inks and crushed up the patterned papers as I went along to create lots of textural frames.